


Summoning For Dummies: A Beginner's Guide to Demons, Angels, and How to Get Them to Finally Kiss

by lyricwritesprose



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: M/M, Reverse Big Bang, outsider pov, summoning fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-03-01
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:09:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29044392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: Crystal, Thomsin, and Amelia are facing a magical menace at their boarding school, so naturally, they try to summon a demon.  Fortunately, the demon they get doesn’t seem tremendously evil.  In fact, he seems entirely smitten with the person who comes to rescue him.So now, Crystal, Thomsin, and Amelia havetwomissions.  First, to deal with their own magical peril—and second, to convince the demon and his friend that the two of them were made for each other.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 120
Kudos: 139
Collections: Do It With Style Good Omens Reverse Bang





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Please enjoy the art from SleepySkele, who you can find on Twitter under @SleepySkele, and on instagram under http://instagram.com/sleepyskele!

“Are you sure,” the bigger girl said, “that this is a good idea?” Her name was Crystal, she was twelve, and she thought it probably wasn’t.

“We went over this,” the kid with the messy hair said. Their name was Thomsin, on the theory that if Tamsin was a girl’s name and Thomson was a boy’s, then Thomsin was the nonbinary version and they were not accepting criticism at this time. “We need help, and nobody wants to help us.”

“If they believed us, they would.” That was Amelia. Amelia was smaller than the other two, being  _ almost _ eleven, which of course meant she was actually ten.

“I wouldn’t believe us either, to be honest,” Thomsin admitted. “Anyway, we’re already doing it.”

The thing they were doing was a diagram with candles at the corners of a five-pointed star. It had an ominous air about it. It couldn’t move, of course, or express any kind of sentiment, but it still managed to ominous from its place on the dorm suite floor. Omin? Om? Crystal was briefly distracted wondering how you made  _ ominous _ into a verb.

However you did, the diagram was doing that verb.

It did not help  _ at all _ that the diagram needed a drop of blood from each of them.

Crystal contributed her drop of blood and stood back hastily as Amelia started the incantation in Latin. She had translated it with the help of google, she told Crystal, and gotten the gist of it, but she didn’t want to try it in English even though there was no reason why a demon should  _ want _ Latin, they  _ predated _ Latin.

_ Demons don’t actually demand your soul for every little thing, _ she had told Crystal confidently.  _ In the Middle Ages, there were supposed to be some that you could just sort of summon to teach you math or astronomy or whatever they specialized in. _

Crystal, at the moment, was wondering about more concrete things than souls. Like, for instance, her lungs. She liked them  _ inside _ her body, not  _ ripped out of. _ She was very attached to them actually.

Smoke billowed inside the diagram. Crystal thought,  _ oh God it’s working help. _

_ Which demon did you pick? _ she had asked Amelia.  _ The astronomy one? The math one? _

_ Well, I didn’t know exactly what we’re up against, so I decided to go with the Demon of First Knowledge. The translation calls him He Who Crawls. _

Now, Crystal was having second thoughts, and on through third, sixth, and tenth thoughts, about the wisdom of summoning something called He Who Crawls. She had images of centipedes. Giant centipedes. Giant centipedes with huge jaws and venom dripping from them—

Or maybe scorpions?

She threw up her hand to shield it from a flash of light. And then there was something inside the circle.

It did not look like a centipede.

It looked like a human.

It looked like a startled, shocked human in a very fluffy bathrobe. The only sign that it  _ wasn’t _ a human were its eyes, which were yellow, and its feet, which were somewhat scaly.

“What?” said Crystal faintly.

_ “What?” _ The demon, if he was a demon, was a lot louder.

“What?”

A bit of background, perhaps, may be in order.


	2. Chapter 2

It all started when Crystal said, “Guys, do you think Dr. Vogt is blackmailing Dean Weston?”

Amelia straightened up as if she were prepared to go into battle. Amelia was one of Crystal’s two best friends—she had best friends now!—and of the two of them, Amelia was more likely to leap without looking. She was dark-haired, currently wearing a Jack Skellington T-shirt, and she had skipped fifth grade to get into Caldwell Academy, which started at sixth grade—the grade that Crystal and Thomsin were in. Teachers usually described Amelia as  _ intense. _ “We should expose him,” Amelia said. “Go all the way to the Board.”

“I don’t know,” Crystal said. “I just know that Dean Weston  _ was _ okay with Thomsin making up the chemistry work late, and now she  _ isn’t, _ and the only thing I can think of is that Dr. Vogt must have convinced her somehow.”

“It really isn’t that big a deal,” Thomsin said.

Thomsin was Crystal’s other best friend. They were smaller than her—of course, most kids Crystal’s age were smaller than Crystal—and had hair that stuck up in all directions, and usually an air of nervous motion. Right now, all of them were walking to the dining hall, so Thomsin’s energy was at least pointed in a direction, but when they got to the dining hall they would be all jiggling legs, twiddling with forks, and eating a startling quantity of the free Starlight Mints that Compton Dining Hall provided.

Amelia turned all the way towards Thomsin, which meant that she had to walk backwards for a moment. “It  _ is too _ a big deal! You were sick as a dog! Sick as a drunk dog! Sick as a dog with, with . . . do dogs get flu?”

“It  _ was _ flu,” Crystal pointed out.

“So?”

“So, I’m not sure that you can say, ‘Sick as a dog with flu,’ when the problem was flu. It makes it a flawed, a flawed analogy. I think. Maybe. It’s like saying, ‘Sick as a dog that crawled under the covers and mostly communicated by moaning and got scared that they had the Black Death.’” Crystal and Amelia and Thomsin shared a suite.

“It _felt_ like the Black Death,” Thomsin protested. “Anyhow, I don’t want to make trouble. If I go over Dr. Vogt’s head again, he’ll get mad at me, and then he’ll fail me for the rest of the assignments and write bad stuff in my record, and I’ll get in a lot less trouble for a zero on _one_ big assignment than I will for failing the whole class.”

“If you go to the Board,” Amelia said, “they won’t let him do that.”

“How do you know?” Thomsin challenged. “Have you ever gone to the Board?”

“No . . .”

“Do you even know who the Board is? Who’s the Board?”

“I don’t know, but they’ve got to  _ have _ one, don’t they? They’ve got to,” Amelia waved a little bit vaguely, “decide who gets hired and all that sort of stuff. You should go to them and tell them that Dr. Vogt is horrible to you!”

“Why don’t we go back to Dean Weston?” Crystal said soothingly. “She’s got to have a reason for saying that Thomsin can’t make up assignments from when they had the flu. If we just talk to her, she’ll understand.”

§

“Guys,” Thomsin said in a low voice, “I think there’s something weird going on.”

They were walking out of the Administration building, the big one which had fake Grecian columns out front—columns that Crystal now knew were “Doric” columns, because even though she couldn’t imagine ever wanting to know which columns were which, her history class had forced her to care about it long enough to pass a test. Crystal and Amelia hadn’t gone into the dean’s office with Thomsin, of course, but they could “sit outside and beam in moral support,” as Amelia put it.

Crystal was privately glad that she hadn’t been the one to talk to Dean Weston. When confronted with authority, she always stuttered, whether she was in trouble or not. And Amelia would have been standing on a chair preaching revolution before the meeting was over—well, maybe not, that was unfair, but the whole “intense” thing wasn’t always a blessing. “What happened?” Crystal asked.

“Dean Weston didn’t remember that I had been to her before.”

Amelia blinked. “What?”

“She swore I had never brought the problem to her. She asked me why I hadn’t come for help. And I said I had, and she said that was impossible, and she got a bit mad at me, honestly.”

“So is she going to help?” Crystal asked.

“Yeah, she’s going to tell Dr. Vogt to let me make up the assignment, but she was  _ really _ irritated. Especially when I broke my pen. I didn’t  _ mean _ to, I was just fooling with it, and all of the sudden  _ splat _ and there was blue ink all over the carpet.”

“Are you sure she really didn’t remember? Maybe she was just saying that,” Amelia said.

“She really seemed not to remember.”

“Weird,” Crystal said slowly. She couldn’t think of a good explanation. “But at least it’s done now.”

§

Thomsin turned in the assignment the next day, or tried to. It was lengthy, several pages neatly typed (double-spaced) with the chemistry equations nicely centered. Crystal had witnessed Thomsin fighting with their computer about the formatting, and was suitably impressed by how well it had turned out.

Dr. Vogt barely looked at it. “Late work is a zero,” he said.

“I-I talked to Dean Weston,” Thomsin said, stammering a little. Dr. Vogt made them nervous.

“So did I. Don’t bother her again.”

§

“Dean Weston,” Thomsin said in a low voice, as they left the Administration building, “doesn’t remember our conversation.  _ Again.” _

“That’s impossible,” Crystal said. “You remember conversations you have  _ twice.” _

“And the stain from the pen was still on the floor, and I asked her where it came from if I wasn’t there and didn’t break the pen, and she got mad at me and threw me out. There’s something  _ really _ weird going on.”

“Maybe she has a brain tumor,” Crystal said.

“Yeah, or maybe Dr. Vogt is hypnotizing her or something,” Amelia said.

“Pretty sure hypnosis doesn’t work that way.” Last year in fifth grade, when Crystal had gone to a sleepover and they had wanted to try the light-as-a-feather, stiff-as-a-board trick, Marsha Milan had sent her into tears by remarking snidely that no amount of supernatural force could make  _ Crystal _ as light as a feather. As a sort of private revenge, Crystal had gone on the internet and read a lot of debunking stuff, which included not only the light-as-a-feather trick, but also a bunch of stuff about hypnosis, healing crystals, and so forth. She had seriously considered confronting Marsha with her newfound knowledge, but that might mean that Marsha would stop ignoring her, and Crystal was honestly much happier being ignored by certain people. “I mean, all the Captain Underpants stuff, or Scooby Doo, or that sort of thing, that’s not how hypnosis works.”

“How do  _ you _ think she forgot, then?” Amelia sounded challenging.

“I said. Maybe she’s got a brain tumor.”

“Brain tumors don’t make you forget  _ just _ what Dr. Vogt wants you to forget.”

It was a legitimate point. “Maybe he drugged her,” Thomsin said.

“If he drugged her, he would still have the drugs somewhere,” Amelia said thoughtfully. “Guys, Dr. Vogt lives just off campus . . .”

§

“I can’t believe we’re doing this . . .”

“Shh!”

“I am shushed, I just can’t believe we’re doing this!”

Dr. Vogt’s house was red brick, two story, and had meticulously groomed shrubbery and a garden with a pond in the back yard. Crystal knew this because she, Thomsin, and Amelia were currently sneaking up to Dr. Vogt’s house.

It was, Crystal thought, a bad plan. The fact that she hadn’t come up with a better plan didn’t mean that they should have gone with  _ this _ plan. She should have had a better idea, she should have put the brakes on this, she should have . . .

It was dusk. It was dusk, and they were trespassing, and they could get in  _ so _ much trouble for this.

Crystal made what she hoped was a quick dash from the hedge beside the fence to the hedge beside the house, heart in throat, hoping that nobody was looking out the window. Then she motioned for the others to come on as well.

Thomsin arrived an instant before Amelia. “All clear?” they whispered.

“I don’t  _ know! _ I’m making this up as we go along!” Crystal crept to the nearest window. “How do we get a look in?”

“Put me on your shoulders,” Amelia said promptly. “I’m the smallest.”

“If we fall over, they’ll hear us.”

“So, we don’t fall over! Come on, we’ve come this far, we can’t just sneak off and do  _ nothing!” _

She had a point. “Okay,” Crystal said, crouching down. “Get on. Don’t grab my hair. We’ll stand up on three—“

“Hang on, not quite ready yet.”

“Ready now?”

“Yeah, I think . . .”

“On three, then. One, two—three!”

Crystal staggered to her feet, Amelia swaying perilously above her. All they needed, Crystal thought a little bit hysterically, was a trenchcoat, and then they could sneak into a  _ Saw _ movie—not that she’d ever really wanted to see a  _ Saw _ movie, the whole thing sounded like she’d spend half the time covering her face, but that was what people did, wasn’t it, tried to sneak into movies they were too young for, and Crystal couldn’t think of any other movies that really qualified—

“This is—“ Amelia’s voice was low. “This is too weird.”

“What do you see?”

“They’re in  _ robes. _ Three of them. Dr. Vogt, Mr. Drexler, and I think Ms. Watanabe? I don’t know, they’re short and a little fat, like Ms. Watanabe. They’re standing around some sort of—I can’t really see, there’s something on the floor, and it’s lighting them from underneath, and the light looks weird—“

“Weird how?” That was Thomsin.

“I don’t know, just  _ weird, _ okay, there’s all kinds of weird going on in there and it looks like some kind of, I don’t know, some kind of magic spell or something, and  _ Crystal don’t do that— _ “

Amelia grabbed for the windowsill to keep her balance. Crystal hadn’t done much of anything, really, just shifted her weight, but it was enough to rock Amelia dangerously.

Grabbing for the windowsill should have handled it.

None of them expected the sudden swarm of spiders. There was nowhere for spiders to swarm  _ from. _ But Amelia choked off a shriek and shook her arms in panic, shedding spiders in all directions, and Crystal lost her balance and toppled from the sudden movement, and Amelia landed in the boxwood bush with a crash. And then Thomsin was yelling, “Run run  _ run!” _ and Crystal yanked Amelia to her feet and they were all running for it.

They didn’t stop running until they were back on campus, back on familiar sidewalks, and then ducking behind a dormitory so that the security man wouldn’t ask why Amelia had twigs in her hair.

The spiders had evaporated between the house and campus, and none of them could say where they’d gone.

“So, um,” Thomsin said, and then didn’t seem sure how to continue.

“So, magic,” Crystal finished for them.

“Yeah. Pretty sure magic.”

“What do we do  _ now?” _

None of them had an answer.


	3. Chapter 3

It was amazing how summoning a demon seemed like it might be a solution until you got to the bit where you had actually summoned a demon, and you were staring at him, and he was staring at you with wide yellow eyes, and everyone’s brain was just a morass of  _ what? What?! What!!! _ Including, from his expression, the demon.

Did demons have brains?

“Um,” Crystal said, because it didn’t seem like anyone else was going to. “Hi?”

“Why is a demon in a bathrobe?” Thomsin asked very quietly.

The demon looked vaguely offended at this, and snapped his fingers with a sort of upward motion, and he wasn’t in a bathrobe anymore. He was, instead, in a sort of suit—Crystal didn’t know enough about suits to identify it, but it was black, with a dark red shirt showing underneath. The demon’s hair was suddenly—not unmussed, but mussed in a way that looked more planned, more  _ I’m too cool for a brush _ than  _ I just got out of bed. _ He looked, Crystal thought, like someone who wanted to be mistaken for a rock star and secretly wanted people to ask him for his autograph. There were sunglasses in his hand. He put them on.

“Not,” the demon said, with a sort of casual menace, “a very well-made summoning—ow!” The  _ ow _ was as he attempted to step out of the circle and apparently bumped his head on it.

He looked disgruntled, and then there was a cellphone in his hand. He muttered something like,  _ soon see about this, _ and dialed a number, and then—

Crystal wasn’t very sure about  _ and then. _ What it looked like was that the demon dissolved into particles, smoke maybe, that vanished into the phone as if they’d been vacuumed, and then abruptly exploded  _ out _ of the phone—exploded the phone, in fact—and the demon reconstituted as he hit the circle, and bounced to the  _ other _ side of the circle, and was knocked onto the ground, phone smoking beneath him. His glasses were askew, and the phone smoked underneath him. Crystal thought that whatever he wanted to say next, it was probably considerably stronger than  _ ow. _

If demons cussed, what would they say? The same bad words that humans used? Or did they have much worse curses of their own? Would it singe the air? Shatter the ears? Or would it just sound like a bunch of syllables that Crystal wouldn’t understand because she had never heard the words before?

“Are you okay?” Crystal asked, starting to move forward and then thinking better of it.

The demon climbed to his feet. “Just a little test,” he said, sounding like someone who was trying to sound casual. “Wouldn’t want to do anything for summoners who weren’t worthy. But you!” The smile reminded Crystal of a game show host. “You have  _ certainly _ passed with flying colors! Now, put out the candles and tell me what I can do for you. Knowledge? Power? Riches?”

“Um,” Amelia said. She didn’t sound in control of the situation. She sounded like she badly wanted to be in her bed clutching the plushie tiger toy that she wouldn’t admit to sleeping with every night. “Are you He Who Crawls? The Demon of First Knowledge?”

“Why are you looking for First Knowledge?”

“Er . . . mainly looking for  _ any _ knowledge, actually,” Amelia admitted. “Our teacher—our teacher is doing black magic, I mean I think it’s black magic—maybe I shouldn’t be calling it black magic, I mean, is that bad, to say it like that? But he won’t let Thomsin turn in their chemistry assignment, and it’s not their  _ fault, _ they had flu, and the clinic doesn’t start offering flu shots until the third week in September and they didn’t get on the schedule until later and by that time they’d already gotten it, but the point is, they  _ should _ have been able to turn it in, and they worked hard at it, only Dr. Vogt was using magic or something on the Dean and then we figured out that he was using magic and now we don’t know what to do and we  _ think _ he’d probably do something pretty awful to us if he found out it was him at his window that night so we summoned you and . . . um. Here you are?”

The demon looked at her. “I’m sure that made sense inside your head,” he said finally, “but on the way out of your mouth, it tried to run off in ten directions at once. Are you honestly trying to tell me that you tried to summon the Demon of First Knowledge to get a professor not give you  _ bad marks?” _

“Is that British for bad grades?”

“Yes, probably.” It came out as a sigh. “Do you know what the First Knowledge  _ was?” _

“No . . .”

The demon seemed on more familiar ground here, and leaned forward, dropping his voice to seem more dramatic. “The Knowledge of Good and Evil. The knowledge contained in the fruit that Eve and Adam ate, the knowledge that got them cast into the desert, out of Paradise. Is that the sort of knowledge that you want? Because I can give you that. But there’s a price. There’s always a price.”

_ “Um,” _ Crystal said urgently, “consult time.” She beckoned the other two out into the hallway. Amelia practically ran. Thomsin seemed a little more frozen, but finally moved fast, looking just as freaked out as Crystal felt.

_ “Guys,” _ Crystal hissed, as soon as they were in the hall. “I think we summoned  _ the actual Devil.” _

“He doesn’t seem like the actual Devil.” Amelia was white around the lips. “The actual Devil would be able to get out, wouldn’t he? I mean, you couldn’t keep him in with just chalk.”

“Maybe he’s faking,” Thomsin jittered.

“Yeah, but if he’s the Demon of First Knowledge, and the first knowledge was the Apple, then that makes him the snake that told Eve to eat the apple, and that’s supposed to be the Devil. I  _ did _ go to Sunday school.”

“I flunked out of Sunday school,” Thomsin said.

Crystal blinked at her, momentarily distracted. “How do you . . .”

“It wasn’t my  _ fault, _ okay. Really it was Bill Brabson’s fault for playing with his lighter, only nobody would believe he had a lighter because he’s got his parents totally snowed that he doesn’t smoke and anyway everyone felt sorry for him because it was  _ his _ pants that caught on fire when I broke the chair, which was  _ also _ an accident! That’s not the point. The point is, if that  _ is _ the Devil in our bedroom, we don’t dare take anything from him! One of Amelia’s knowledge demons, fine, but I’ve watched  _ way _ too many scary movies to think that messing with the Devil is anything like okay!”

Amelia shushed them. Crystal followed her gaze and saw Kelly Bradshaw, headed for the bathroom with her pink basket of toiletries. She was in her pajamas, and gave them a peculiar look as she passed.

Crystal waited until she went into the bathroom before responding to Thomsin. “Yeah, I think you’re right. How do we send him back?”

Amelia glanced towards the bedroom.

The book, Crystal realized with a sinking feeling. The book, which was still in the bedroom.

“Oh, man.”

_ “Shh!” _ Thomsin said urgently. “He’s  _ talking _ to someone!”

§

It took a moment to sort themselves out so that they all could eavesdrop. They opened the door a crack, and all peered through it, which involved a lot of shuffling about figuring out where everyone could stand to put their heads in the right places, and then they had to jump back and look casual as Kelly Bradshaw came back out of the bathroom. She gave them an even more peculiar look.

When they got themselves sorted out, though, the demon—Devil?—sounded . . . different.

“Yeah, an actual ssummoning.”

Crystal, whose head was highest, saw that he had his cellphone back—no, he had a different cellphone, the first one was still in ruins on the floor. He was facing away from the door, and looked as if he wanted to pace while he talked, only he couldn’t because he was stopped by the chalk lines.

“Yeah, it seems to be kids, but I don’t trust that. And even if it is just kids, I don’t trust them not to try to ssend me ‘back to Hell’ or something once they’re done, and then where would I be? Besides. You know. In Hell. Obviously.”

The person on the other end said something.

The demon’s jaw dropped.  _ “You what?” _

Response. Whoever it was, they seemed to still be talking when the demon cut in. “But—wha—no—angel—you’re saying you actually  _ got rid of _ books! As—as in. Destroyed them.” He swallowed, and for a moment, looked incredibly lost and vulnerable. “Because they could be used to summon  _ me.” _

Response.

“Nnn—no. That was never part of the Arrangement. Angel—“

Response.

“Oh. Well, I suppose that makes sense.” And now the demon looked crushed, as if he’d just held out a desperate hope for someone to say something important, like  _ I love you, _ and been met with—with something that was not  _ I love you. _ “I suppose—in the spirit of, of it being very inconvenient without me—would you be willing to help me out of here? I do  _ not _ want to think about what Beelzebub would say if I drop out of zzir ceiling.”

Response.

“Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Well, see you soon, angel. Ciao.” He hung up, still looking lonely.

Crystal closed the door quickly as the demon looked like he was going to turn, nearly thunking Thomsin in the head. Thomsin fell over backwards.

“I don’t think he’s the Devil,” Thomsin whispered, picking themself up. “The Devil wouldn’t worry about Beelzebub, they’re like the same person or something.” They thought about it. “And Beelzebub is a zie.”

At the end of the dorm hallway, Kelly Bradshaw and her roommate stuck their heads out of the door, looking not unlike Crystal and her friends must have, only with two heads looking around the door rather than three..

Crystal was doing her best to process what she had just seen. And, more importantly, heard. “I think he has a  _ crush,” _ she said.

“He can’t. Demons can’t. Can they?”

Crystal motioned to them to shush until Kelly and her roommate disappeared again. “How would we know?” she said. “Has anyone ever asked a demon, ‘Listen, does your heart sometimes kind of do a thing when you see a, a nice curly set of horns?’” Crystal wondered if demons had hearts. Or, for that matter, horns, because this one didn’t seem to.

“He called them ‘angel,’” Amelia said. “If a demon calls someone ‘angel,’ it would be like me calling someone a demon, right? Not a compliment.”

“He didn’t say it like it wasn’t a compliment.”

“Do you think the Devil would show up in a bathrobe?” Thomsin wondered. “If the Devil had a bathrobe, would it be, I don’t know, a flaming bathrobe or something? That wasn’t a flaming bathrobe. It looked—I don’t know—comfy.”

“Thomsin,” Crystal said, _“focus.”_

“I’m  _ trying, _ there’s just too much  _ stuff!” _

“Yeah, well, I think the thing we have to focus on is that I don’t think he’s the Devil, and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t want to be banished back to Hell, and—and I’m not totally sure he’s  _ bad. _ He hasn’t done anything bad yet. I mean, he hasn’t really had a chance to do anything bad, but still—he hasn’t.”

“The thing we have to focus on,” Amelia began, and then stopped talking as Kelly came out of her room and knocked on the Resident Advisor’s door. Crystal half expected her to get no response; the RA was a notoriously deep sleeper, having an alarm clock that regularly tormented the entire dorm with a horrifically loud, buzzing version of the Winnie the Pooh theme that skipped two beats every time. But after a moment, the door opened and Kelly went in.

“The thing we have to focus on,” Amelia went on, whispering grimly, “is that he called someone, and someone  _ might _ come and release him from the circle.”


	4. Chapter 4

The demon seemed calmer when they came back into the room. “Is it just you?” he said. “Really?”

“Who else would it be?” Amelia asked.

“I don’t know. Cultists. Sorcerers. That lot.” He was still trying to sound casual. Which was sort of like Thomsin trying to seem chill and mellow. It was a magnificent effort, but it wasn’t working.

“Do people ever try to worship you?” Crystal wondered.

The demon grimaced. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I mean, if you  _ are _ the Demon of First Knowledge, does that make you the Devil, or doesn’t it?” Crystal persisted.

“Of c—ghhh—gah!” He rubbed his throat. “You put a  _ truth _ spell in this thing?”

“Maybe?” hazarded Amelia.

“All right, all right. I’m not the Devil. It’s all down to delegation, isn’t it? Himself says, ‘Go bring low the newest things God has wrought,’ and Beelzebub says, ‘We need to do something to the New Things, Dagon, see to it,’ and Dagon says, ‘new things, bit of trouble, I need a volunteer,’ and eventually it ends up at me, which means that Satan may be  _ ultimately _ responsible but he isn’t  _ personally _ responsible any more than Bill Gates is personally answering the phone and telling you to turn it off and back on again.”

Crystal nodded. “That makes sense. Um. If you aren’t the Devil, then who are you? Um, I’m Crystal, this is Amelia, that’s Thomsin—“

The demon was staring at them incredulously. “You’re  _ idiots, _ ” he said, “is what you are.”

“What? Why?”

“You don’t give out your names. You never give out your names to a supernatural force, unless they can reasonably be expected to know it anyway. It makes you more findable.”

Crystal swallowed. “What’s your name, then? That way, we can be even, and agree that nobody tries to find each other and nobody tries to mess with each other.”

The demon looked pointedly at the lines on the floor. “You count as a supernatural force.”

“I thought you said there was a truth spell in the circle.”

“There’s truth spells and there’s truth spells. This one isn’t going to force an answer out of me, just stop me from lying to you.”

“Oh, Crystal said.

“Why don’t you call me Ashtoreth? It’s not my name, but it works.”

It sounded like a very demony sort of name, Crystal thought. Beside her, Amelia shook her head. “Isn’t that the demon that teaches you math? Isn’t it rude to use a different demon’s name?”

“No, that’s Astaroth. People get us mixed up a lot. He’s  _ dragon-y, _ I’m—gghh—okay, what I was going to say does  _ not _ count as a lie! This thing needs a few good whacks with a wrench. I was going to say that I’m not dragony, except that technically I  _ have _ pretended to be a dragon. It was the middle ages. Do you have any idea how boring the middle ages were?”

“Not really,” Crystal admitted. “So, can you change into anything you want?”

“Mmnrgh—sort of. Better if it’s a form I’m familiar with. You sort of get some shapes broken in, and you get a morphic resonance going with them—it’s complicated.”

“So you basically  _ chose _ to look like a guy in a bathrobe,” Thomsin interpreted.

“Will you leave the bathrobe alone? I was having a quiet night in, I’ll have you know, with a nice cup of wine and a good show on the telly, and the next thing I know I’m being yanked sideways through the spacetime continuum, nearly knocking my brains out on random atoms, until I end up here. By the way, where is here?”

“Caldwell Academy,” Thomsin said. “What’s a good show if you’re a demon?”

“None of your business,” Ashtoreth said. He seemed peculiarly wrong-footed by the question, as if it struck at something he was insecure about.

Could demons be insecure?

“Look,” the demon said. “This problem you’ve got with your professor, teacher, whatever—what exactly do you want done about it? If you let me out of here, I might be able to fix things, and then we can go our separate ways and never see each other again.”

“You just want to be let out,” Amelia accused.

“Of course I want to be let out! You’d want to be let out too. But you know I’m not lying.”

“We want to make sure he can’t find us,” Crystal said, overriding whatever Amelia was going to say.

“Okay. Shouldn’t be hard. Psychic camouflage, it’s been done before. Suspicion would just slide off you.”

“And we want Thomsin to be able to turn in their assignment.”

“You guys,” Thomsin said, “are more worried about that assignment than I am! Listen, I would  _ happily _ forget about the assignment to avoid being turned into frogs, or zapped by lightning, or turned into frogs and then zapped by lightning, or turned into frogs and zapped by lightning and then squashed—“

There was a knock at the door.

The demon made a gesture with his head that made it obvious that he was rolling his eyes. “Only you would knock!” he yelled at the door. But he seemed, for the first time, not to be tense as a violin string. More triumphant. “If someone talks to you,” he advised, “the first thing you ought to ask yourself is  _ why they want to keep you talking.” _

The knock came again.  _ “I heard someone in there!” _

Heather, the RA. The smile dropped off Ashtoreth’s face like a cartoon anvil when gravity finally kicks in.

All three children froze for a second. Then Amelia yelled back,  _ “It was the TV!” _ She would have sounded enormously more convincing if her voice hadn’t squeaked when she said it.

There was no way, Crystal thought wildly, that they could possibly talk their way out of this one. Did people get expelled for summoning demons? Inviting unrelated adults into the dorm was strictly forbidden. Was a demon an adult? Ashtoreth certainly  _ looked _ like an adult. Would they try to arrest him? Would he do something horrible to campus security? Would she and the others get in  _ trouble _ because he did something horrible to campus security? Would . . .

She was moving towards the door, though, when Heather knocked again. Opened it a crack. “Sorry,” she said, “we were just watching Netflix. What’s going on?”

“I want to come in.”

“Thomsin is in their underpants.”

“Why are you watching Netflix in your underpants?”

“Well, they’re under a cover!”

“Then it shouldn’t be a problem for me to come in.”

“It would just make them feel weird, okay? What’s going on?”

“I had a report that you were playing some sort of Dungeons and Dragons thing in the hall,” Heather said.

Crystal blinked. “Dungeons and . . .”

“Some sort of role-playing. I want to talk to you about it. Listen, I’m coming in. Thomsin can cover up.” Heather put her hand on the door.

Crystal would win a shoving match—Crystal thought she would, anyway—but at what cost? What sort of trouble would they get in, for all of this?

An adult stepped into view and tapped Heather gently on the shoulder. “Dreadfully sorry,” he said, “but would you mind going back to your room and forgetting about all of this?”

Heather blinked, a very slow blink. Then she said, “Sure. No prob,” and turned away.

Crystal stepped back. That wasn’t normal. In fact, unless she was very wrong, that had been  _ magic, _ which meant that they were in big trouble—

The man pushed the door open while she was distracted. “Crowley! There you are!” He hurried forward, bent down, and started snuffing the candles around the summoning circle, the old-fashioned way, by pinching the wick. “You had me  _ dreadfully _ worried,” the newcomer scolded.

“So, your name is Crowley, not Ashtoreth,” Amelia said.

Crowley was wearing a peculiar look, with exasperation and relief being totally overshadowed by what Crystal could only think of as  _ heart eyes. _ “Hi, angel.”

“And as for you!” The man turned around to face the children. “Do you have any idea how dangerous a summoning is? Not to mention  _ rude. _ An entity is going about their life, doing their worst, and you simply snatch them through space to fulfill some whim of yours? Some banal desire for riches, or—“

“Homework,” Crowley-not-Ashtoreth put in, stepping out of the circle.

“That’s not fair!” Amelia took a step backwards from Crowley, swallowing. “We’re  _ really _ in danger!”

“They think a professor is using magic,” Crowley explained, “and they think he knows about them and is going to do something to them.” He gave the other man—man?—a sort of ironic look. “Be a good deed to help them out.”

“I fail to see how it’s any of my business. Especially after they were so unpleasant to you!”

“They weren’t,” Crowley said, “really. They asked nosy questions. They didn’t even  _ try _ to take my blood, or strip my wings, or command me to do anything. Downright polite, as summonings go. Besides—“

The other man looked closely at him. “Is this about Constantinople? Because it’s children, again?”

Crowley looked away. “Shut up.”

“My lips are sealed. But, as you say, I do have somewhat of a responsibility to defend against the powers of darkness, which means that we may have to look into this.”

“Isn’t he the powers of darkness?” Thomsin wondered in a reedy voice. Thomsin was pressed against the wall, as far as they could get from the demon.

“That,” the man said, “is entirely beside the point. What’s your name, child?”

“I’m not sure I’m supposed to tell you.”

Crowley rolled his eyes. It was amazing how obvious it was that he rolled his eyes, despite wearing sunglasses. “Thomsin, Amelia, Crystal, Crowley, Aziraphale.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Crystal said automatically. Aziraphale, that wasn’t a normal name. Well, not a normal name for around here; it could be Arabic or something, but Aziraphale didn’t look especially Arabic. Maybe it was a sorcerer’s name? Maybe Aziraphale was a sorcerer? Maybe he had summoned Crowley once, and the two had gotten to talking, and . . .

And what? The path from  _ summoning _ to  _ heart eyes _ was somewhat obscure.

“Guys,” Crystal said, “consult time.” She motioned towards the hall.

This time, Amelia and Thomsin came immediately.

Crystal closed the door, lowered her voice, and bent towards the other two. “Crowley’s in love,” she said.

“He’s a demon.” That was Amelia.

“Yeah,” Thomsin said, “but he’s also totally in love. You can see it.”

Crystal looked towards the door. “I don’t think Aziraphale knows, though. I mean, he was sort of—fussing over Crowley, but it wasn’t quite a  _ husband _ way, just a  _ fuss _ way. I think maybe  _ fuss _ is kind of normal for him.”

The door across the hall opened a crack, and Crystal dropped her voice even more. “Thing is,” she said, “maybe we have to do something about that.”

“Do something?”

“He’s a demon. He’s a demon, but you heard him, he doesn’t want to go back to Hell. Maybe it’s like a fairy tale, and true love’s first kiss will mean he—I don’t know, gets to stay on Earth or something.”

Both of them looked struck by the idea. “What do we do, though?” Thomsin wondered.

Amelia squared her shoulders and looked decisive. “Leave it to me. I know how these things work. I read fanfic.”

§

“We got you a hotel room!” Amelia announced.

Aziraphale blinked at her. “A hotel . . .”

“If you’re going to stick around and help us, you need someplace to stay, right? And you can’t stay in the dorm, because first there aren’t enough beds, and second the RA will  _ really _ get on our tails for that, and third, it’s kind of ew. So I got you a hotel room. It should be pretty good. I had to use my Mom’s credit card number.” Which Amelia had memorized, which Crystal suspected would be trouble sooner or later, but that was a problem for future Crystal and future Amelia.

Crystal had done the talking—she was the only one with a voice which could pass, in a pinch, for an adult’s—and she had done it with Amelia whispering in her ear, which she thought was actually pretty impressive when you thought about it.

She was a little bit worried that Darla Michaels from down the hall had heard them, because she had gone downstairs at the time and Crystal couldn’t exactly *stop* talking to the hotel, that would tip them off.

“That’s very kind of you,” Aziraphale said, with every evidence of sincerity, “but—“

“We’ll take it,” Crowley interrupted. “Where?”

Amelia gave him the address.

It was all, she had explained to Crystal, tremendously clever. Crystal had her doubts. But she had specified—several times, at Amelia’s insistence—that they needed a room with only one bed.


End file.
